KOOZ How does the practice of NOIA understand and define the notion of borders and territorial identities?

NOIA Our interest and research into borders originated numerous years ago and is focused on their spatial qualities and characteristics. Rather than reading borders as elements of division, we are interested in exploring these as meeting points, as spaces for the contamination of contrasting identities. Through a variety of scales, from the territorial to the architectural, we are keen to test the idea of borders as spatial elements, thresholds with their own depths and marginalities of exchange. We aim to analyse the geopolitical, historical, geographical, economic and political reasons and implications of these spaces. As a matter of fact, the concept of the border allows for the establishment of fundamental dichotomous categories: inside and outside, light and dark, sacred and profane.

KOOZ What prompted your inquiry into the notion of borders as existing and exemplified within the urban context of Tbilisi?

NOIA Our analysis on borders in Georgia commenced throughout our studies in university and was rather focused on the conflictual territories between Georgia and the Russian Federation. As borders occur on the ground, in the villages and settlements where people live, we thought that architecture ought to be involved in their study, thus we were interested in including the figure of the architect within a discourse which is typically reserved to historians or geographers.

Out of the 4 million people who live throughout Georgia, almost 1.5 reside within the capital concurring to its definition of urban site in continuous expansion and laboratory of urban transformations. Borders, and the transformation which they lead to throughout Georgian territory, are themselves manifestations of a very complex geopolitical and social historical past and present.

The edges of Tbilisi are specifically interesting as they truly reflect the conflicts and frictions which have arisen since the reconstruction of the city following its almost complete destruction in 1795. Morphologically bound by the mountains and the river, the flatland which had originally hosted the city at its inception soon ran out leading to the city’s expansion into the surrounding landscape and to the rise of unexpected spontaneous situations. The city’s borders exemplify an intervened stratification of totally different identities that meet, emerge, or even collapse at its edges.

We were interested in those ambitious areas where problems and opportunities overlap, and throughout the workshop we decided to focus specifically on the neighbourhood of Nutsubidze. Situated on the “edge” of the city which was developed during the late years of the Soviet Union (around the 1950s and 1960s). Nutsubidze is characterised by unique modular soviet models which had to be adapted to the mountainous topography of Tbilisi’s expanding edge. To date these are juxtaposed to new developments for private housing which are appearing at a very quick pace across all parts of the city’s edge.

KOOZ To what extent are borders within the city static, or do the exemplify temporary conditions?

NOIA Borders are never static entities. If one looks close enough there is always something which is in transformation. This is particularly evident within the context of Tbilisi as an urban laboratory in continuous transformation where identities are incessantly mutating when compared to other European cities which appear to have more stable borders.

KOOZ The workshop proposed an alternative process of mapping through collective drawing with the ambition of offering diverse site reading and re-establish new common values, or rediscover old ones within a chaotic context. What is for you the value of mapping, beyond mere representation, but rather as an active tool for research?

NOIA Mapping as an act of representation is a recent construct. Since modernity we have come to see the world as a copy of the map, and so to understand the map as a copy of the world and not vice versa is quite revolutionary.

For us the map exists as an investigative and narrative tool for an enquiry into a specific territory. Our understanding of the map stems from what we believe are two distinct perspectives on the latter whose contrast is explicit in two different cases of mapping new lands: Christopher Columbus who adapts the earth to the cartographic dimension at the cost of deforming it, and Marco Polo who travels immense distances without the idea of space and the need for maps, thanks to the mere measurement of time. These examples call for a reconsideration of conventional methods of representation to define the measures best suited to capture the specific qualities of places.

Looking back at historical cartographies, in particular to Medieval ones, it is interesting to note that the map consists of a sort of diagram of the world, more similar to an open picture in which different kinds of information coexist zoological, anthropological, moral, theological, historical and so on. Similarly, a reverse transformation occurs in the mid-twentieth century with the Situationists Jorn and Debord, whose maps of the city enhance the experience of the human body against the backdrop of the urban fabric.

We are very much interested in exploring these alternative methods of mapping which sit in stark contrast to the very specific rules and images produced by modern cartographies which deform the world to fit the map. Through our research we explore the possibilities and narratives which can be created by mapping the experience of the territory.

KOOZ Through the practice of walking and careful observation, the workshop also investigated the relationships between landscape, infrastructures and accelerated urban expansion. What were your most interesting findings? How have these informed or redefined your reading of the Georgian capital?

NOIA The workshop signalled the beginning of this endeavour and approach of using the human body as the main character to observe and document the city’s transformations. An aspect which we found very compelling was the fact that although all mappings derive from distinct human bodies and their respective interactions with the territory through time and as a relationship between scales, somehow the individual authors and subjective readings seemed to disappear in favour of a collective image. Although, from the offset we had the ambition of collecting these recordings into one unique narrative, by the end of the workshop the process came quite naturally.

KOOZ To what extent do you envision these mappings as past or future endeavours? How do you see them shaping new ideas on the evolution of the city in the coming years?

NOIA The map is an act of witnessing the experience of the human body in space or the presence of the observer as an element of the examination system. In both cases, the qualitative character is based on the ability to read the world through a privileged experience of it. We seek to continue to experiment with these kinds of curious explorations of diverse territories with the ambition of revealing the qualitative value of these spaces rather than their numeric or quantitative attributes. Considering that borders are highly dynamic spaces and situations, we believe that these maps can bear witness to these unique and important transformations.

However, we think that it is very difficult to apply universal methodologies of analysis to every city, where pre-established logics are not compatible or effective in understanding the cultural functioning of the specific case. We think that to use mapping as a tool for shaping ideas one needs to formulate new types of maps, based on local conceptions and relationships. The territory might be seen throughout these maps as an experience rather than an abstract concept. We really like what Italian anthropologist Marco Aime says about maps, that they are not a spatial reproduction but traces of relationships.

Bio

Duccio Fantoni is an Italian architect, researcher and co-founder of NOIA practice, a Georgian- Italian architectural office. He has been studying the relationship between architecture, landscape and culture. Starting from archeology and architecture history, his interests have developed in the direction of contemporary city and relational theories. In 2021, he begins researching on the state of transformation of Tbilisi and the role of its territorial context. Currently, He is PhD candidate at Politecnico di Milano at the department of Architectural Urban Interior Design.

Salome Katamadze is a Georgian architect, researcher and co-founder of NOIA practice, a Georgian-Italian architectural office. She has been studying the border territories in different scales, with a transdisciplinary approach. Her interests focus on the role of Architecture and Landscape along borders and conflictual areas. In 2021 she has been a research fellow at Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, where she inquired notion of the border in spatial sense and interpreted it as a threshold between different identities. Currently, she is PhD candidate at Politecnico di Milano at the department of Architecture and Urban studies.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Parallel to her work at KoozArch, Federica is Architect at the architecture studio UNA and researcher at the non-profit agency for change UNLESS where she is project manager of the research "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.